rip it, rip it
undoing knitting projects, and doing them again.
hi friends, i am in my loon era
this months calendar page is the common loon! loons return to their northern breeding grounds in the spring, and begin nesting in early May. what is not to love about the common loon - their speckled breeding plumage, their spooky call thats in Anaconda by Nicki Minaj, their ability to stab Bald eagles to death. it’s just a perfect bird! which is why i knit a sweater with a loon on it this month!
after finishing my last two knitting projects, 2 agonizing days passed where i had nothing to knit. with all that time to peruse the internet, i found this beautiful cardigan pattern with a big loon on the back surrounded by cattails, and bought yarn for it the same day.
this is the first project i’ve done where i made a lot of adjustments to how i made it. the pattern is for a cardigan, sewn together out of 3 flat panels, which i changed to be all knit in the round. i also tried to avoid using intarsia like the pattern pretty clearly instructs, but i could not get around it and had to unravel some work.
i’ve done intarsia once before and was really frustrated by it then, but i found that once i was in a good flow, this worked up really fast! when in progress, intarsia can look unmanageable, but miraculously i was able to work with the spaghetti pile of yarn. the most difficult part in my opinion is figuring out how long to make your bundles of yarn for each section. i had to buy one extra skein of black yarn to finish, which could’ve been avoided if i’d been a bit wiser with my math and hadn’t made so many cut scraps and long ends.
i knit a sweater in a month! less than a month, slightly! now, to be real, it is not really Done. i have a thousand little ends to sew in, and then i have to do some duplicate stitches to cover colorwork mistakes, and then i have to block it, but it’s like 98% there! this project required a lot of patience, and i’m so happy i stuck to it because i feel so much more confident about taking on more colorwork sweaters, both intarsia and stranded.
this project went well and i am very happy with the end result. however, occasionally and maybe inevitably, a fiber project will turn out wrong. i’m confident that anyone who makes wearable knit or crochet knows this feeling. you finished it, tried it on, and knew that this isn’t what you had imagined. sometimes that feeling goes away after a week or two when you forget all the things about the project that you hated. sometimes it doesn’t, and that project still bums you out when you see it folded up in the corner after months gone ignored. there is a solution to this feeling! i am a proud project undoer and yarn reuser, and i am here to defend unraveling projects!!!!
i find the process of frogging (because you rip-it, rip-it) peaceful, even if frustrating at times. i love the process of knitting, and by undoing something that i am unhappy with, i get more practice, more time knitting, and an end result i’m likely to be happier with - a win all around! personally, i find it a little easier to frog a project when it’s been hidden in a box unused for months. by then, i’ve had time to distance myself from all the time it took to make, and i know that yarn could be put to work on something i like even more. Especially if its pretty (or expensive) yarn. spending 40 hours and $100 on something i don’t like is just a huge bummer, but leaving that effort unappreciated is even more of a bummer! there is also some destructive satisfaction in unraveling work that took hours to make in 15 minutes, and like magic, you have yarn to use again! infinite yarn glitch.
by all means, put that dumb project in time out. get it out of sight if you cant bear to undo everything you just worked so hard to make just yet. but i really think the value of turning something you are unhappy with into something Different (seriously it doesn’t have to be better) can’t be understated. you have the power of turning string into whatever you want - take that string back! not to be that guy but, it Is all about the journey with knitting, and really any slow art form. the joy of knitting is in the process of it, working one stitch at a time and seeing your stitches turn into a thing with structure and pattern and texture! so frog it if its bad, make it again, make something else entirely!
i liked ending the last newsletter with a contextless list of things i liked this month - i do this in my own personal journals as practice for recognizing the good parts of my life - so once again, things that brought me joy this May: cygnets, American Werewolf in London, pho, Fiona Apple’s 1996 album Tidal, hot sandwiches, Ray Troll’s art, Noro yarn on sale, my new bike, knitting at the jazz show, and everynoise.com.
bye bye for now, come say hi on my website guestbook, or in the comments here :) i love you! have a nice day! wear sunscreen!
i hope you enjoyed reading this installment of my newsletter! if you have thoughts to share/questions to ask/fun facts to tell me about, please reach out to me by replying to this email, or messaging me on any of my social media linked on my website at augustcampbellart.com - thank you!